This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 26, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's been years since Social Security's fate has been hotly debated, but in a world of trillion dollar deficits

and tens of trillions in promised payments in coming years, it may well be past time for the

U.S. to cash out of planning for Americans retirements.

Michael Tanner, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, comments.

Well, the problem is that through the normal appropriations process,

Congress and the President really have control over a relatively

limited amount of federal spending.

Now, the President's made it worse by exempting his new health care spending and the TARP funds and the stimulus bill and a

host of other things. But even if he wanted to include all discretionary spending and

domestic discretionary spending, he would be a relatively small portion of the budget.

The big problem lies in the entitlement programs, particularly Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

If Social Security is on autopilot, what can possibly be done to restrain its growth?

Well, we really should go back and revisit the whole idea of Social Security reform.

Now, it's true that there's not a great deal of appetite on Capitol Hill right now

for dealing with Social Security. George Bush made such a total hash of his campaign to reform

Social Security that it's scared a lot of people off.

But none of the problems in Social Security have gone away.

The fact is that they've actually grown worse.

In just six years, by 2016, Social Security will begin to run a deficit spending more

money on benefits than it takes in in revenue.

We all know what it means when you have more money going out the door than you have coming in.

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